INTERVIEW WITH SEAN BYRNE AND ROBIN MCLEAVY
October 29th 2010 04:06
Horrorphile: Sean, what were some of the horror movies you watched as an adolescent that inspired you to become a filmmaker? Are their definite favourites you come back to?
Sean Byrne
Robin: Oh Sean!
Horrorphile: Impressionable!
Sean: - I was at the drive-in, I was in my pajamas, I was meant to be asleep at the time. So there wasn’t a lot of censorship in our family. I remember seeing Friday the 13th, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and all those films from an early age. Yeah, Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre definitely left an impression. The Shining. The one and only nightmare that I’ve ever had from a horror film was An American Werewolf in London, I think I saw that when I was about nine. It was the full moon, and the whole mythology … which is weird because it’s a comedy-horror …
H: It’s a great film. And The Howling [indicating The Howling t-shirt I happened to be wearing] Casting is, of course, incredibly important in a horror movie, and a lot of filmmakers screw that up, but you didn’t Sean! How did you come on board, Robin, did you audition for the role, or did Sean cast you directly?
Robin McLeavy
Robin: I actually auditioned for the role of Mia first of all, and then I came in for Lola, which was a lot more exciting for me [giggles]; just a very juicy and exciting character, and such a rare thing to play a villain and be the woman inflicting all the violence in a horror movie, so rare! Yeah so I just came in for a couple of auditions, and then, yeah, that was it, wasn’t it!
H: What’s your take on the horror genre? Have you watched many horror films?
Robin: I was terrified of horror. Not a horror fan at all. My friend took me to see The Ring –
H: The Japanese or the remake?
Robin: No, the remake.
H: Which isn’t too bad.
Sean: I liked the remake.
Robin: But that’s more supernatural. I sat there with my jacket over my head. And I was furious at him for tricking me into thinking it was a romantic comedy about an engagement [laughs] -
H: [laughs]
Robin: - but I swiftly realised I had to find an appreciation for horror in order to play this villain, so Sean put me on to Misery, Carrie, Natural Born Killers … They were the main three.
Sean: Yeah, I’m not sure if I suggested Fatal Attraction as well.
Robin: Yeah, yeah!
Sean: But you took the bunny boiling to another level. [laughs]
Sean Byrne on set with star Xavier Samuel and co-star Victoria Thaines
H: [laughs] Now it’s not specifically stated in the movie, but there’s a very distinct old school about the film, it almost feels like, is this set in the 80s? Was that old-school-feel a conscious decision right from the get-go of writing the screenplay, or did that come in later?
Sean: It was a conscious decision. The film’s being labeled now a “glam-horror”, now that you mention that 80s, it probably could be a “Wham-horror” [laughs]. I’m a huge fan of the late 70s/early 80s horror because they had a real sense of fun, they were just, you know, balls-to-the-wall, gleefully demented, good time, and Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead is still I think the most brilliant use of a single location. I was a big fan of Brian De Palma’s Carrie, and I knew both of those sub-genres are very, very popular, so I thought imagine if I fused the two of those it should at least have a commercial life, and then it was about coming up with a good script and trying to, at least on the page, have some kind of sub-text and depth of character, and then it just became about casting the right people who didn’t think of it as just a horror film and just played the roles. Because I think that’s why horror can often be considered disposable because there’s not a lot of attention to character, very often it’s just cardboard cutouts, having sex in a hammock –
Robin: [laughs]
H: And not very well acted either. It jumped out; the casting and the performances were really strong.
Sean: Well we had this saying that if you don’t care, then you don’t scare, and that’s a credit to the actors, because if you don’t care about the people in peril then there won’t be any suspense.
H: Now Olli Olsen’s score was great, but of course there are some source songs as well; Lonesome Loser, which jumps out at you, and it’s a great, wonderful opening, and then you’ve got Casey Chambers [Not Pretty Enough]. Were those two songs from the beginning of the screenplay, like, “I can hear that in that scene”?
Sean: The first draft had Neil Diamonds’ Cherry, Cherry, and that cost about fifty million dollars [laughs] -
Robin: [laughs]
Sean: - so then my next choice was Little River Band’s Lonesome Loser because I think it’s a really cool song, and it’s got a really great kind of Eagles-esque mid-West sort of feel to it, and I didn’t want this to feel just uniquely Australian, I wanted people to hear it all around the world and go, yeah, that’s got a warmth to it, and I can nod my head to it, and it’s also important for character … A good song’s a good song.
Princess with her toy boy
H: By the end of the movie Not Pretty Enough takes on a blackly comic edge …
Robin: It’s the perfect character monologue through song for Lola [laughs]. She’s got terrible self-esteem, and needs to be validated by the opposite sex, and just not receiving it.
Sean: I thought it was cool that the hero listens to the Devil’s music and the villain listens to the pop ballads.
H: It looks like the movie was a hoot to make, especially the extended dinner sequence. Was there much improvisation at all?
Robin: We rehearsed everything quite meticulously, we only had about four days rehearsal, especially for the dinner scene, and then I remember on the day we would often have a quick discussion while setting up shots and talking about what twists to put on it, and Sean might say “Okay, I want you to do this” and I’d say “Okay, and what if I do this as well” and he’s say “Yes, let’s go!”, so it was very off-the-cuff and we’d just throw stuff around, and it was really exciting. Sean had a really strong vision of what he wanted, but then at the same time we were able to have a conversation on the day that would just put a little intricate spin on different moments.
H: Nice, nice. Was there much left on the cutting room floor, so to speak? Did you have a tight shooting ratio?
Sean: We shot on the Red [digital camera], so it wasn’t as tight as if we were shooting on 35mm, but it was a twenty-seven day shoot, so there wasn’t really a lot of time for multiple takes. There is one sub-plot that ended up on the cutting room floor, just because it was basically there to communicate the twist and as so often happens, what’s required on the page of a film becomes readily obvious when you’re in the cinema watching it.
H: Now Robin you were saying how wonderful it was to play the character of Lola, and you bring lovely nuances to it, and I believe you did some research into psychopathic behaviour.
Robin: Yeah, well I read all the Jeffrey Dahmer cases, but that made me feel really sick and disturbed and for my own sanity I wanted to try and keep away from that stuff, so I got into some lighter reading, and I read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks –
H: Yeah, great, great …
Robin: - and I loved the way he described his patients behaviour, and it was like he observed them in a really, I don’t know, like he was watching them with a really appreciative eye, rather than a critical one or a doctor’s eye. There was one patient that he described in the book that when they were on the verge of an episode they felt maniacally well, and they had a sense of expansion, musical allusion, and all sorts of wonderful sensoric [sic] things going on. Okay! That can be my little anchoring point for the kind of joie de vive that Lola has. The playfulness coming from inflicting torture on this young man is actually a pleasure, rather than a purely vengeful act - which of course there’s that in there - but it’s really like a series of magic tricks.
Birthday girl Lola and daddy (John Brumpton)
H: It’s only really in the last quarter that we see Lola in a truly fractured, up until that we’ve seen her in control, quite playful in a misfit kind of way …
Robin: Yeah, and I suppose the crucial part where Lola snaps – I won’t say what happens – but just loss and grief, having your normal stability rocked a bit as a villain can just send you even further into viciousness.
H: So, how do you compare screen acting to stage acting, because you’re primarily a stage actor, and I was interested, do you turn down screen work, or are you moving into that more?
Robin: The thing is I’m always drawn to theatre because the female characters are invariably so strong and interesting and complicated, and I find so often in film you’re going for the girlfriend role or the wife role or the babysitter role, you know the nurturing, caring, comforting roles, and they hold no interest for me. With Lola it’s just, you know, so exciting to have a female character that is vicious and vulgar and violent and pretty at the same time, but the prettiness is a learned thing.
H: There’s almost a purity, unfettered …
Robin: Yeah, and it’s like she reached four years of age and then she never kind of developed beyond that.
H: And that’s when the scrapbook started [laughs].
Robin: [laughs] Yeah!
H: The Loved Ones has a deliciously wicked sense of humour, but it’s not an all-out comedy. Sean what are your thoughts on humour within a horror film?
Sean: I think it works as a pressure release, because the horror’s quite extreme without having those moments to take a breath and then prepare for the next white-knuckle onslaught the film could become an ordeal. I always wanted to have comedy but I didn’t want it to be played for the comedy, I wanted it to be situational, and I also wanted the comedy to be as jet-black as the violence was extreme because I thought that would give the film a unique tone, because so often with comedy-horror films one part of the film gets diluted for the other, and I didn’t want that to happen, I wanted it to be searing on both fronts.
H: Yeah, yeah. So do you have a preference for the visceral intensity of say a David Cronenberg horror to say, the supernatural creepy weirdness of Ringu or Ju-on, the J-horror stuff, do you weight them equally?
Sean: I think it comes down to what is a good film and what isn’t a good film. I love a good ghost story and a psychological horror film, and I like a good nihilistic torture film … Not that there’s many strong versions of that type of horror. But I like to use the whole horror toolkit because I think that’s a part of the problem of horror films is that they can tend to become one note, one the violence starts it’s just a lot of somebody stalking somebody else, and no matter how slowly the masked man walks and how fast the victim runs somehow the gap keeps getting smaller and smaller, so I wanted some of that quiet psychological horror that’s sort of whisper and I also wanted to be able to scream in the audience’s face as well.
H: Yeah. The special effects team did a great job –
Robin: Mmmm.
H: - and I loved seeing all the special effects essentially done in front of the camera, I’m pretty old school like that.
Sean: Same.
Robin: Yeah.
H: CGI, you know, should be used when it’s too difficult to do it for real with prosthetics or whatever.
Robin: Just to advance the story, not as a spectacle unto itself.
H: Exactly, and these days too many horror films they’ve even done away with the squib now -
Sean: Oh yeah …
H: - and all the little things are CGIed!
Robin: Yeah.
Sean: The blood looks ridiculous!
H: It looks ridiculous; they can’t get it right, no, no.
Sean: Squibs are so great, and also in terms of the performance as well, because when a squib goes off …
H: And your blood looks great; I’m a stickler on colour and consistency. [laughs]
Sean: I know all about that …
H: As much as I love Dario Argento, and I love his stuff, but his early films the blood’s bright red so it doesn’t look real, so you’re distanced from it. That’s okay, but I worked on Peter Jackson’s Braindead -
Sean: Oh, wow …
H: - and the blood recipe was brilliant.
Sean: It needs clarity. I think it’s really important to horror fans that as many of the effects are practical especially low-budget horror wears its practical effects like a badge of honour.
H: Well, it’s an illusion, it’s an art.
Sean: Yeah. And I think it’s much easier to react to as well; the more that’s actually there, that’s tangible.
Robin: That was one of the main things that enhanced my appreciation of horror, was seeing all the prosthetic guys from Wicked of Oz work their magic, you know, preparing my prosthetic wrist piece for two hours or whatever it was, and just the intricacy. Like you say, it really is an art form in itself.
H: It can be grueling, I guess, when you’ve got to spend several hours -
Robin: Well, I didn’t mind because it was such a new and exciting experience for me and it really opened my eyes to the talent that is required to pull it off.
Sean: And to compliment the prosthetic you had quite a few of your own cuts and bruises … [chuckles]
Robin & H: [laughs]
H: Now there’s a nod to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and you did mention the movie before. Was it a direct influence from when you were writing?
Sean: To be honest, it wasn’t. I just wrote that scene and then it’s been brought up so many times since that I know it must have been, unconsciously, because I’ve seen that film so many times! I didn’t want to be a slave to my influences either. In a way the film is like a soup of all my different influences, and hopefully it’s got a fresh taste.
H: It does, it does, it never feels derivative. It’s a nod.
Sean: At the time I wasn’t aware of it, but I’m very proud for it to be a homage.
H: Yeah, there we go. What are your thoughts on this lazy trend of Hollywood where they’re just plundering everything, whether it’s good or bad, to remake it? It feels like there are fewer and fewer releases that are genuinely original. And if you were approached by the bigwigs to remake a film, would you?
Sean: I think this trend of only making films with title recognition is more horrific than the horror films they’re making as remakes. I just think it’s totally soulless and it lacks any invention, or creativity, it’s a complete money-making exercise and they’re just never any good, you know? I don’t understand it. And looking online I don’t think horror fans really understand it either. It’s like, who wants to go on the same roller-coaster over and over and over again. The Loved Ones puts some loops in different places and I just hope it gets out there on a lot of screens. I mean soon we’re gonna run out of Roman numerals …
H: The title, The Loved Ones, where did spring from?
Sean: I came up with about a hundred titles and then that one just felt like the right fit. Just because it’s about the guilt the lead character feels because the loss of a loved one and him realizing that he wants to live and get back to his loved ones, and also it ended up representing the twist in the film which I won’t go into. I was determined not to have an emphatically horror title like Driller –
Robin: [laughs]
Sean: - because I think the film works best as a slide into Lynchian madness and it has to start with an every day quality to signal exactly where it was going right from the beginning I think would take a lot of the fun out of the ride.
H: The title lures you in to a false sense of security.
Sean: It should start off in an idealic happy place because it gives the film further to travel.
H: Tell me, is it to hard to get funding for a horror movie in Australia? I was curious to read how your producer didn’t want to do another horror after Wolf Creek and Rogue, then you had Madman [Entertainment] jump on quite quickly which would have been great having them on board. I’ve seen your short, which I thought was great.
Sean: It’s hard to get money for any type of film, you’ve just gotta kind of hang in there, and make the argument as concrete as possible. The Loved Ones was well-received by the funding body from quite early on. We actually got what’s called an amber light from Screen Australia, which is we like what we see, but we wanna see more, so I went off an made the short film Advantage, which had a similar sort of palette, and a candy-slick look, and ripped the rug out from the audience’s feet, and so tonally then investors’ could look at that film and go, ahh, I get it. And that made it so much easier to get the money.
H: Would the casting have helped? Having Robin and John Brumpton on board …?
Sean: We were given the green light before then and we knew the budget. I mean, if it was the American system and you could get the cast together first then that can make a really big difference, but in Australia the budgets aren’t as big, and we couldn’t really afford to cast without knowing we definitely had the rest of the money. I mean if I knew Robin was going to make such a fantastic Princess [a.k.a. Lola], we could have filmed something and possibly that would’ve helped. So now for any other film I’ll just grab Robin …
[H, Robin and Sean laughs]
H: Do you have any advice for budding horror screenwriters and/or filmmakers?
Sean: I think genre affords filmmakers a real freedom because theoretically there’s a built-in audience so therefore you should be able to bend the genre as much as possible. So that would be my advice; if you want to cut through and get one foot in commercial territory and have the other foot dangling over a cliff, then maybe you’ll get noticed up against a hundred million dollar film.
H: Do you want to continue in the horror genre?
Sean: It depends on the material. I’m writing a warped home invasion thriller at the moment. I’m really into drama and I’m into comedy, so I would love to show off my range as my career develops.
H: What about Robin as a Final Girl …? [to Robin] Are you familiar with that term?
Robin: No.
H: It’s the “pure” female character which has made it to the end of the horror movie, bruised, but resilient.
Robin: I have a preference for “sin” over “purity” [laughs]
H: So give me another villain role?
Robin: Well, I feel I shouldn’t do another horror film because I don’t want to be pigeon-holed and I’ve done so few films. My next role I feel should be a romantic-comedy or a period drama and go in completely the opposite direction. I could definitely play another villain, but not in a horror context. Just yet. [pause] Maybe when I’m fifty and silver-haired. [laughs]
H: Lovely to meet you guys. Thank you so much.
Sean & Robin: Thank you.
The Loved Ones opens nationally in Australia Thursday, November 4th.
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Comment by merryl
I can't wait to see "The Loved Ones".
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
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20/20 Filmsight
Screen Fanatic
Comment by Jason King
Sydney Table
Salty Popcorn
Total Randomness
What was your blood recipe? I used to make it for a bunch of people's short films and used corn syrup, red and blue dye and peanut butter - I loved it
Am doing a giveaway sometime this weekend on Salty for the film. So jealous you got to meet them.
Comment by Matt Shea
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Screen Adventure
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Film & TV on DVD
This one has been on my must see list since your gushing review earlier in the year.
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile